Missoula Personal Injury Blog

As the death rate from cancer climbed in past years, the focus of the medical community was to limit deaths through increased treatment. However, in recent years the death rate from cancer in Montana and around the country has fallen. This has led researchers to wonder if cancer patients are now overtreated, which could lead to medical malpratice. According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, they believe the answer to that question may be yes.

At their June 2018 meeting, the society has largely concluded that some patients were receiving treatment, including radiation, which was unnecessary. One example the society discussed was a common form of breast cancer known as HER-2 negative disease. In many cases, an anti-hormone treatment and surgery were enough to cure the disease. In many cases, women were urged to go through chemotherapy anyway. The harmful effects of chemotherapy were used despite being unnecessary.

The day you were involved in an auto accident may have begun like any other typical day. Perhaps you drove your kids to school or commuted to work, or both. When you clocked out at work, you were looking forward to meeting your spouse at your favorite local pub for a fish sandwich and a beer. You never arrived there because you wound up in a hospital instead. If another motorist's negligence was responsible for your injuries, you may face an emotional, as well as physical, struggle in recovery. 

Some Montana accident victims suffered worse injuries than they realized in past situations when initial physical examinations seemed to have gone well. A day or several days later, they began to show signs of traumatic brain injury. Recovering from a TBI can be a long, arduous process. You can't get help if you don't know you're injured, however. Being able to recognize signs of a brain injury and knowing where to seek support are key factors toward a successful recovery.  

Many Montana residents depend on mobile apps to make their lives easier, but a new study found that apps could also help them get better medical care. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Physician-focused mobile health apps are becoming more common in the health care industry. They are designed to help doctors perform various tasks, including making diagnostic and testing decisions. The problem is that no one had ever studied the usefulness of these apps in a medical setting. That changed when researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teamed with researchers from Baylor University to test the CDC's PTT Advisor app, which aims to help doctors diagnose and test for certain coagulation and bleeding disorders.

Misdiagnosis or a failure to diagnose a severe illness like cancer can be a significant fear for patients visiting the doctor or going to the hospital in Montana and across the country. There can be serious consequences of an incorrect diagnosis or other doctor error, because people can receive incorrect and potentially harmful treatment while lacking much-needed treatment for their actual disorder. This can lead to a declining health condition or even the possibility of the disease becoming untreatable. This means that for health institutions concerned about both liability and patient care, reducing diagnostic errors is a priority.

When performing bone density scans, the use of data entry software for radiology departments can help to cut down on the number of diagnostic errors. This is especially true when reporting the results of ultrasound or dual-energy X-ray (DEXA) radiology tests. The software can also help save time and money; over a five-year period, a study indicated that using this type of software could save a hospital $1 million in radiologists' wages. Most important for patients, however, is the fact that between 6 and 28 percent of all reports from ultrasound or DEXA radiology contain errors related to data entry.